Adamnanus, Vita S. Columbae.

Origin

Continental Centre

Script

Irish Minuscule

Contents

Adamnanus, Vita S. Columbae.

Foliation

Pp. 138; 290 X ca. 225mm. in 2 columns of normally 28 lines.

Comments

Written by Dorbbene, abbot or prior of Iona (†Oct. 713), whose subscription on p. 136 reads ' quicumque hos virtutum / libellos columbae lege/rit pro me dorbbeneo / deum deprecetur, ut ui/tam post mortem eter/nam possedeam'. Corrected in the ninth century in a Continental centre. Later belonged to the library of Reichenau: part of an erased ex-lbris is seen at the foot of p.1, 'Liber Aug ...' (saec. XIII), and part of another is found in the top margin (saec. XVII). The manuscript was copied in 1621 by the Irish Jesuit Stephen White, who presumably brought it to Schaffhausen. It certainly left Reichenau before A.D. 1795.

Irish names are often overlined. Script is an early and vigorous Irish minuscule mixed here and there with majuscule forms. Y has two forms, both going below the line and one being typically Irish with both branches curving to the right; the oblique of z thrusts far below the line; in the ligature of ae the a is a small open bow; a and i occur subscript. Greek letters are used here and there and for the entire Latin colophon of Book II (p. 103). The Lord's Prayer in barbarous spelling was added in Greek uncial on p. 137, originally left blank. An important milestone in Irish calligraphy.